Title: Assessing the Short-Term Air Quality Health Impact from Land-Use Changes During Heatwaves: A Health Impact Assessment in Barcelona Metropolitan Area / Heatwaves amplify air pollution, increasing public health risks, particularly in urban areas where land use influences the distribution of pollutants. This study examines the short-term health effects of air pollution during a two-week heatwave in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area under different land use scenarios
Title: A Social-Ecological-Technological Vulnerability Approach for Assessing Urban Risks. Case Study of the Hydrological System of Barcelona, Spain / As urban populations continue to increase throughout the 21st century, a greater number of people are anticipated to face risks associated with extreme climate events. This study explores the intricate nature of water-related risks to urban communities through a Social-Ecological-Technological Systems framework.
Gara Villalba contributed to Session 11 at the ICOS Cities event "Science meets City 2024": Quantification of urban greenhouse gas emissions - from novel monitoring to source identification. She presented the greenhouse gas monitoring network deployed by the URBAG group in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona.
Title: Effect of Land Use Changes on Air Quality: Impacts of Urbanization, Urban Vegetation, and Agriculture / Rapid urbanization in urban areas is transforming natural landscapes into impervious surfaces, resulting in changes to the physical properties of these surfaces. Changes in surface physical properties impact local temperature and convection, which in turn affects air quality.
Title: The food-water-climate nexus of green infrastructure: Examining ecosystem services trade-offs of peri-urban agriculture/ Emission reduction, heat mitigation, and improved access to water and food provision are increasingly critical challenges for urban areas in the context of global climate change adaptation and mitigation. The revival of local agricultural production is often lauded as a potential nature-based solution.
Title: Determining the Intensity of Future Heatwave Episodes at Urban Scales: A Case Study of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona / Given that more than half of the world’s population currently resides in cities, further understanding of the potential impact of future climate change on urban areas is needed. We thus simulate future heatwave (HW) episodes in the metropolitan area of Barcelona (AMB) using the pseudo global warming dynamic downscaling method.
Title: Exploring how the heterogeneous urban landscape influences CO2 concentrations: The case study of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona/ To understand the role these factors play in the distribution of CO2 over an urban area, we conducted a CO2 measurement campaign over the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB) over four urban land uses: impervious, green, forest, and agricultural.
Svetlana Khromova presented the first step of an integrated approach to informed Nature Based Solutions (NBS) at the CONEXUS Conference. The CONEXUS conference took place in Barcelona from May 15th to 17th, which aims to share the knowledge about nature-based urban solutions as a tool for urban planners.
Alba Badia showed a poster on “Modelling the effects of land use changes on the urban air quality: urbanization, urban vegetation, and agriculture” in which she discussed the air quality changes between the reference scenario and the scenarios that have been designed by the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB)’s office of urban planning.
Two URBAG presentations were shared at the conference by Ricard Segura-Barrero and Sergi Ventura. Both presentations followed the platform for Early Career Scientists (ECS). The first one was presented by Ricard Segura in the session "Urban climate, urban biometeorology, and science tools for cities". The second, presented by Sergi Ventura, was held in the session "Regional to local climate change, processes, impacts, and extremes".